Alright, this is something that has been plaguing me over the past 5 years, and I think its time that it should be known to others. Back when I was kid, I had a great facination with big preditors... and two of my most favorite of the north american preditors were the Grey Wolf and the Mountain Lion. I did extensive research on them, and learned much about their behavior. But by the time I was about 13, there was a new show on TV called Animal Face-Off, where they took animals that normally encountered eachother and ran tests to see who would most likely come out on top if they got into a fight to the death. One such episode was Mountain Lion vs. Wolf, of course I knew that the cat would be the likely winner in a one to one fight but since I had done research on both animals for quite some time I knew that wolves often prey apon pumas, so I had a hope that the wolf would still put up an amazing fight. When the simulation of the fight was over and the puma was the winner I was disapointed but what really got me is that the person who was the head of the puma team absolutly rubed the results in the wolf teams face! And that started a chain reaction for me. Soon I began letting loose my anger on the puma, the animal that I once respected. And for a long while I couldn't even think of the cat with out getting pissed off. By the beginning of this year I had finally cooled off and was look at the cat with respect and saw it as a powerful preditor that could only be equaled to its only preditor the wolf. But then I heard of a new game that was going to have realistic behavior amongst the animals including hunting and fighting behavior. I was interested but I wanted to check to make sure that they were indeed accurate with the behavior, and I looked up wolf vs. puma fights. Soon I came upon several blogs on the subject, though I know that blogs are the worst places to gain academic knowledge from I decided to look into it. Sure enough I found about 90% of the bloggers were in favor of the puma, but what really pissed me off was that they were using inaccurate information, exagerated ideas, and uneducated conclusions. Some of these conclusions were a result on one video on youtube of a puma attacking a young wolf (though you don't actually see the wolf die but the way things were going, it probably did). And so nearly everybody who saw this jumped to the conclusion that this would ALWAYS be the result in this situation. And the bloggers who aproved of this idea quoted "the puma will win, hands down", "wolves are cowardly animals and are no match for a puma", and "pumas prey on wolves, get over it!" I became greatly upset again. "Was all my past knowledge a lie?" I thought to my self, then I did more research on the subject from books and conservation websites... they told me the very oposite, "wolves prey on moutain lions... wolves often kill mountain lions... though the cat has more of an advantage in a one on one fight, mountain lions try to stay as far away from wolves as possible". Also I found a picture that was taken in Montana of a large male puma that was killed by wolves, more specifically by a large male wolf who had become the Alpha of the pack. The people who took the picture stated that the wolf pack and the puma kept their distance from eachother until a black male wolf who was not from the area became the Alpha of the pack and put a hit out on the cat. And any wolf biologist will tell you that even though wolves hunt in packs, it is the Alpha that dose most of the killing. So I was a little happy again, until some bloggers found the picture and claimed that it was "A FLUKE". That finally made me come to the conclusion that most of these puma supporters are a bunch of uneducated doosh-bag kids that always think every thing is one sided. And apperently they have some sort of grudge agaist wolves, for they continue to over exagerate the cat's capablities and practically imortalize it as a demigod and put the wolf down as cowardly weak puppies that are a disgrace to all preditors. Wolves and pumas in reality are equally matched preditors, sometimes the cat will win in a fight, sometimes the wolf will win. Both will attack eachother over food but wont try to make eachother food. National Geographic states that wolves reduce the population of pumas which are then pushed up into the mountains towards their normal habitat, but other wise both animals coexist with out killing one another. And just recently I saw a video of a single wolf chasing a mountain lion away from its kill even after the cat swiped at its head a few times. So in my conclution, the cat statisically has the advantage over a lone wolf but the wolf has the potential to take the cat down. And so I am slowly looking at the cat with respect again, now that I know that all my knoledge was not a lie, pumas are powerful preditors and sometimes kill young wolves but wolves often hunt and kill pumas, but are voerall equally matched preditors.